


Took the Breath from My Open Mouth

by stardustedknuckles



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Established Relationship, F/F, Light Angst, Light Bondage, Porn with Feelings, Role Reversal, again to nobody's surprise, brief mention of mind control, caleb is briefly a cat to nobody's surprise, yasha's therapy involves claws and teeth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-12
Updated: 2020-11-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:28:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27519904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardustedknuckles/pseuds/stardustedknuckles
Summary: The one where Yasha asks Beau to take her over after an emotional afternoon, featuring some underrated Yasha/Caleb friendship to kick it off.
Relationships: Beauregard Lionett/Yasha
Comments: 9
Kudos: 160





	Took the Breath from My Open Mouth

**Author's Note:**

> Me, for like 6 weeks now: I'm gonna do it eventually. I'm gonna have Yasha in Beau's spot. Just gotta figure out the best way.
> 
> I think this'll do.

"I'm bad at talking but…we can, I mean. Can I help?"

It was a kind offer, but Yasha couldn't find the right emotion or mechanism to convey her thanks. She shook her head roughly and curled inward a little more at the expression that flickered across Beau's face in her periphery.

She had to say something. Even if Beau understood - even _though_ Beau understood, she corrected herself - it was still no easy thing to make an offer like that and mean it. "I can't," she ground out. Her fingers in her lap curled tightly. "I'm too angry." Her words sounded petulant on her own ears.

Beau sighed and ran a bloodstained hand through her hair. "And you don't want to fight about it because…" she gestured in her own vague direction, and Yasha just barely suppressed a scoff.

Because she'd nearly bled out in the snow? Because it had happened again, something had taken Yasha's mind from her again, and again Beau had almost died?

Yasha turned her head to look Beau over - all the scrapes and scratches and angry bruises. At least she hadn't caused them this time. Not directly.

"Hey." Beau's voice was sharp but kind. "Quit looking at me like that."

Yasha felt wretched. "Like you wouldn't have so much blood on you if someone you're supposed to be able to trust hadn't been controlled again?"

"Exactly like that."

Yasha blew out a breath and dropped her head, her hands coming up to interlace behind her neck as she grappled with the memory of the last hour. Some distant part of her appreciated Beau keeping her hands away even though she knew that all Beau wanted was to touch her and comfort her.

The darker part of her sneered that Beau didn't want to touch her, had finally realized she could never trust Yasha, not really -

"Oh there you are."

Yasha and beau both blinked up at the bedraggled figure in the doorway as he shifted a book under his arm and made his way towards them. "I was looking for Yasha," Caleb explained, walking towards them with boots soundless on carpet. Yasha wondered briefly whether, in a tower where he was king, some part of him had made this place to allow him to take on the aspects of his friends. If so, what part of the tower was she?

Probably there was a torture cellar.

"What's up?" Beau asked, but Caleb didn't reply immediately.

Yasha sat up straight and rested her hands in her lap, one curled tight around the fist of the other. "What can I do for you, Caleb?" She knew her voice was overly formal, just as she knew Caleb understood and did not judge her for it.

Now he spoke to Beau. "I need to borrow our large friend for a moment," he said. "I will return her to you in one hour."

He didn't ask Yasha if she wanted to go with him, but the anger that was flaring hot inside of her was not directed at him.

"Yash?"

She cut her eyes sideways to Beau, trying and failing to shift the heavy scowl from her face. "I'm coming," she said. She stood up too fast, could feel Beau's worried eyes follow her up.

"Yeah, okay," Beau said quietly. "I'll just. I'll be here."

The affection that should have come at hearing her making the effort to stay nonchalant for her sake only seemed to solidify into knives of self loathing. Beau didn't deserve her like this. She had done everything right. Yasha put her hand on Beau's shoulder - it was too quick, too harsh, nothing like the comfort she'd liked to have given - and said, "I'll find you." Then she turned and stiffly followed Caleb from the room before she could steal a look at Beau's face and lose her nerve.

****************

They didn't go far, just to the door that led to the closet that could be anything for anyone. He put his hand on the wood and looked up at Yasha. "I would like to spend time getting to know some of the forms I can take with my polymorph. I thought you might like the chance to fight with someone who isn't Beau."

Yasha's swirling thoughts stilled a little in mute surprise. "That's…very kind."

Caleb accepted this with a nod. "Your choice of animal, though I do intend to fight back as well as I can." He pushed the door open and Yasha followed him, thinking in a new direction.

Her immediate thought was the T-rex, or maybe the mammoth. Something that could take her hits and take her out.

But she wanted to fight this time - the anger inside of her was starting to feel a little bit like fear and Yasha didn't want to think about that. She didn't want fear. She wanted focus. She lifted her head and looked out over the simple, perfunctory training pit. "I want something agile," she said. "Strong and fast."

Caleb nodded again, the face of a decision made. "I think I've got you, _ja_." He lifted a hand and closed his eyes, muttering a few words as his fingers traced a brief glowing blue sigil on the air in front of him. The air around him shimmered, and then Yasha found herself looking at a large, silky black cat with long white fangs and a lashing whip of a tail. The panther lifted its lips and snarled at her, but there was something of the noise Frumpkin made when he was content in it too.

Yasha thought this was probably perfect for them both. She stepped to her right as Caleb the panther circled left, and then she braced one foot behind her and held her hands at the ready. "Let's go."

****************

By the end of it, Yasha had strong reason to suspect that Caleb had been working out something of his own, because it was one thing to offer Yasha the chance to fight and it was another to have come at her the way he had, claws and teeth first, not letting up on her for a moment.

Now they were in a heap on the dusty floor, labored breathing echoing and Caleb's soft tail twitching against her ear as he purred. Yasha had a long scratch down her bicep and a couple of holes in her clothes that she would have to bring to Jester, and Caleb had a back paw that didn't want to take much in the way of weight.

Yasha rolled her head to try and glimpse where his head might be. "Satisfied?" Caleb gave a low sort of sound and dabbed at Yasha's face with a massive paw, claws tucked in. Yasha scrunched her face and giggled just a little in spite of herself. "Me too, yes. Thank you, friend." She scratched his soft ears and shifted her hips. "You'd better go before you turn back and get all embarrassed."

Caleb's weight shifted to keep her pinned and he stared back at her balefully, pale eyes gleaming in the lights. Yasha grabbed his tail and yanked without any real heat behind it and Caleb sprang to his feet with a sound of protest before making sure to step on Yasha's solar plexus as we he walked off, tail held indignantly high and twitching.

Smiling to herself, Yasha rested her head on the floor again for a moment and breathed deep. The anger had gone, and in its wake Yasha could more clearly see the components that had made it up. There was the usual fear, the frustration of feeling useless, guilt, a smaller slice of horror at what could have happened than she'd expected, honestly - but all of those were familiar.

She was surprised to find, however, as she probed a little deeper, that the _whys_ of the feelings had changed. She was not afraid of _hurting_ Beau, she was afraid of Beau's distrust. Her frustration at being taken over had less to do with feeling useless and more, she found, to do with disappointment that she couldn't be there beside Beau to take on their enemies _together_.

It was a small shift, possibly even insignificant, but she noticed it all the same and thanked Caleb again in her head for the chance at clarity.

Her mind wandered back to Beau, wondering what she was doing while she waited for Yasha - wondering if she was waiting at all. It felt wrong to dwell on the question of if, after everything, so she contented herself with a few moments of planning where to look for her. Start in the library, in case she'd been literal about being "here," then the kitchen as another general and neutral space. She probably wouldn't be in her room.

Yasha thought she might be ready to try and take her up on talking, if she was still willing. Not likely, she thought as she got to her feet with a wince of pleasant soreness. Likely she'd prefer just to be given an orgasm in apology and they could forget the whole thing.

Either way, Yasha owed her - even if Beau would never see it that way or take her up on it.

Either way, it was time to make good.

And even being able to take for granted that she could make it right, that Beau would always let her make it right whether she thought Yasha had done wrong or not…it was a weight off of her that she'd not been fully conscious of carrying until she'd looked up at some point to find it gone.

****************

Beau felt something relax in her when she looked up from her book to find Yasha coming through the door, dusty and a little bloody but seeming satiated. There'd been a part of her, she realized, that had still thought in spite of everything that Yasha might just retreat and leave her here to wait all night.

She wouldn't have blamed her, even if she wasn't quite sure what that meant.

Another wave of relief when Yasha returned her smile, tired and just a little tight as it was. There was plenty of room on the couch, but Beau wiggled closer to the armrest anyway to leave no room for doubt that she wanted Yasha to sit and be close to her.

Yasha approached and paused a step away, considering Beau and the space beside her. Beau's heart lurched just a little, but it faded quickly as she read the rest of the signs Yasha was giving off. She couldn't quite make sense of them, but nothing about her was suggesting rejection and that was good enough.

"Are you telling me _Caleb_ put marks on you?" she joked. "Talk about an off day."

Yasha's eyes seemed to clarify a little, and she looked down at her arm and her clothes with a sheepish sort of smile. "In my defense, he was a big, black cat at the time."

"Oh dope," Beau said reflexively, and then spent the next couple moments kicking herself mentally as the silence stretched.

Yasha's mouth worked for a moment, not quite looking at her. "Could we…go upstairs maybe?"

The quiet hesitance in her voice tugged at Beau's heart even as the last little reserve of anxiety washed away in it. She didn't want to sit because she wanted to be alone with Beau. That was familiar territory. "Of course." She set her book on the table and tried not to scramble too eagerly to her feet before reaching for Yasha's hand and finding it already waiting for her. Beau grinned. "My place or yours?"

Yasha flushed a little, and it was endearing in a cavernous, bottomless way that used to scare Beau but now just kind of awed her with how it never felt any less like a kind of gravity even after months of established… _them_. "I think I'd like the mirror," she murmured.

"Fuck yeah." Beau started to walk, but Yasha's hand squeezed hers just a little and she realized that whatever Yasha was working up to say, it hadn't just been about sitting next to her on the couch. She touched Yasha's brow, a little concern edging its way into her thoughts again - this time for how she might need to help Yasha, not about what she might have fucked up. A small change, but significant. "Is everything okay?"

Yasha's eyes fluttered closed for just a moment, and Beau experienced a strange moment of vertigo - a kind of recognition that landed strangely because it was an expression she was intimately familiar with on her own face. Suddenly, the energy between them began to make more sense. "Talk to me, Yash," Beau said, and she pushed just the slightest bit of authority into it.

Yasha's eyes snapped to hers, dark for just a moment before she tried again. "I want you," she said, and spent another moment choosing her next words while Beau watched without her eyes leaving Yasha's. "But I think I want…will you take care of me, tonight?"

Only the fact that some small part of her had dared to guess at this possibility kept Beau from being completely bowled over by Yasha's request, by the sheer vulnerability on display in her eyes as she waited anxiously for Beau's reply.

"Yeah," she said, relieved to hear her voice come out steady. "Of course. I've got you."

Yasha's whole face melted into a soft, shy smile. "I know."

If Beau wasn't careful, she was going to slip so far into her racing thoughts that she'd maybe never find her way out. She let her body move on autopilot to take them where they needed to go, but the majority of her mind was focused on pulling out the pieces of who she'd been before Yasha to assemble something that resembled a person capable of handling the delicate assembly that was Yasha when she was like this.

It wasn't that the vulnerability was new - Beau couldn't count the times she'd been asked or volunteered to wrap around Yasha or give her a bath or braid her hair. She had been a lot of things for Yasha, all of them almost entirely separate from anything sexual. In that arena, Yasha was keeper and Beau was kept. Did it make Yasha feel this way, when it was her on the other end? Like she'd been handed the fucking world and tasked with guarding it while it fell apart and came back together again? Beau had never done this before. Not on this level. Taking control in sexual situations was what she did for years while she had apparently just been waiting on Yasha to come show her she didn't have to do it all herself. Or any of it.

And now Yasha was here, asking her to take over.

She couldn't even find it all that hot, no more than normal. She mostly just felt fucking _honored_.

She brought her thoughts back to the present as they pushed through the second of Beau's doors and into her room, which suddenly seemed to her to be inadequate for the task she'd been trusted with. Everything seemed so plain, nothing like what Yasha deserved and what Beau would give her if she could.

Beau took a deep, slow breath and reminded herself that this was about Yasha, that there was nothing about this that could shake her trust in Beau. She turned to Yasha and gently pushed the door closed behind her before looking up into those soft eyes, which stared back at her with an open kind of trust and need that made her want to find all the bad things that could ever touch Yasha and burn them before the thought ever crossed their mind.

"You'll have to tell me what you need," Beau said quietly. It galled her not to have the information magically beamed into her brain, but it was more important that Yasha get what she needed from Beau than it was for Beau to feel accomplished about guessing correctly. "It's a little new for me, with you."

Yasha considered. "Slow," she began, and something very distant buzzed up in Beau at just that word alone. All of the times she had been permitted to return the favors Yasha had given her had been hasty, desperate things brought on by how much it affected her to break Beau down. This was Yasha spilling her secrets of what she actually liked, what she didn't bring out often. "I want your fingers and your mouth, and…" every nerve in Beau's body was alert and tingling - she'd had no idea it was possible to get this turned on simply by the feeling of being trusted.

"Yeah?" she prompted. Her voice was rougher this time, but if Yasha noticed she didn't let on.

"I want to be tied," Yasha admitted. The words fell out of her, but she sounded certain. Yasha didn't take the time to say things that weren't fact.

Beau touched her fingers to Yasha's cheek and waited until she looked at her. "I can do all of that." She brushed Yasha's hair behind her ear, relished the way Yasha shivered just a little. "You'll tell me? If the rope feels bad?"

Yasha nodded gratefully. "I promise. I just don't want…tonight, I don't want there to be the chance that I could push you away."

Beau had never thought of tears as particularly sexy outside of pain contexts, but her signals were getting all mixed up and she could feel her smallclothes growing damp even as her smile came out a little shaky. "Okay," she said. "Do you want me to stay like this, or do you want me to give orders?"

Yasha's exhale trembled slightly, the first indication Beau had seen that she was not alone in wrestling with this strange cocktail of feelings. "Stay like this," Yasha said. She sounded almost like she was confessing, something Beau understood intimately. "Just don't let me try to get out of any of it."

Her eyes closed with a quiet noise of want as Beau leaned up and kissed her softly, and Beau thrilled at the way it was her being given permission to enter Yasha's mouth and make her home there, to have Yasha melt into her like she'd been waiting for a soft place to land.

Soft wasn't a word applied to Beau very often. She was finding she didn't hate it. Not like this. Not for Yasha.

She moved her hands to the straps that made up part of Yasha's outfit and started pulling on them as slowly as she could. Whatever Yasha was chasing from this, it clearly hid among the kind of details Beau usually skipped over in favor of the bed as the starting point. But it was clear to her that it had already started for Yasha, had likely started with her quiet request that Beau take care of her.

Again, Beau's arousal swelled, and again it broke on the rocks of whatever it was to be this, here, now for Yasha.

Finally, Yasha's tunic and breastband had been gently removed and dropped to the floor. Beau could have stayed there all evening with her lips wrapped prayerfully around Yasha's nipple, but she felt Yasha's quiet squirm and the way her arm reflexively came up and forced herself to pull away for now. She had to tie Yasha down first, prevent her from turning the tables on Beau instead.

No problem - Beau could be downright magnetic when she felt like it.

She steered Yasha towards the bed with a hand on her sternum, kissing her softly and without urgency all the while. They had time, so much of it. A luxury, for them, but tonight there would be room for Beau to go slower than she ever had or thought she'd enjoy. Yasha had done that to her a few times from the other end - reached inside of Beau to pull out a touch or pace she hadn't known she wanted but could not imagine departing from once it had been given to her. It didn't seem so strange that she could do it even when she was submitting to Beau.

And what a thought that was, Beau marveled as she pressed Yasha onto the bed and squeezed her knee to indicate she should pull her legs up too, boots and all. Yasha submitting, putting herself in the place that routinely left Beau cracked and raw but always feeling heard, like she was being deferred to somehow even as Yasha shoved a toy up her cunt or drew blood with her teeth. Those were all things Beau liked, and now Beau had the chance to facilitate what Yasha liked - and it was intoxicating.

She got Yasha's back up against the headboard of the bed and spent a moment there just kissing her, knelt between her legs with an arm on either side of her head. Her eyes when Beau pulled away looked almost hazy with loss and want, and Beau didn't miss the chance for an affirmation as she moved to the side of the bed to fetch the rope from the night stand. "You look so good for me," she murmured, borrowing from one the phrases Yasha was fond of saying to her to break her down. Beau didn't suppose the thrill of it ran quiet as clean or as deep in Yasha, to be called good, but she suspected the reminder that Yasha was here for her, that Beau was in control, was what she wanted to hear.

If the way Yasha's breathing hitched in her throat with the smallest of noises was any indication, Beau had been right on the money.

She started with Yasha's left wrist, massaging her palm gently with her thumb before winding the soft rope over and over her forearm and checking in with glances to Yasha's face as she worked. Her fingers stayed loose and pliant under Beau's as she tugged Yasha's arm just slightly further away from her body in a subtle kind of reminder that Beau decided how open Yasha would be for her. She got a kind of low hiss of pleasure in reward, and finished off those knots feeling more and more sure of herself as she went.

Beau climbed up onto the bed and over Yasha's lap to start tying her other wrist, and to the palm of this one she pressed a gentle kiss before tugging on it as well so that Yasha's arms had about six inches of free movement in either direction.

"Good?" she asked when she was perched again between Yasha's thighs. Yasha pulled a little on the ropes, and Beau watched her face carefully for a sign of anything scared or uncomfortable.

She was forced to conclude that Yasha just looked soft and obscenely turned on. "Yes," she replied.

Beau smiled and splayed her hands on Yasha's stomach, scratching just lightly at the pale skin there before dropping a kiss above one of her nipples. "Let's get started then."

Beau had to have spent a solid hour just completely lost in Yasha's body once her boots had been removed and her pants thereafter. There had never been a moment when Yasha had looked like anything less than all of Beau's favorite things put together and turned up another three notches, but having free rein to pet and caress and squeeze and explore…she could get drunk on this, she thought.

"Keep looking up," Beau murmured against the side of Yasha's throat in between open-mouthed kisses and lazy, slow trails of her tongue. "What do you see?"

Yasha groaned, a sound that had been growing steadily higher pitched the longer Beau spent worshipping the expanse of her body and praising her gently. "I see you," she said shakily. "How much it means to you to - ah - be trusted like this."

Beau "hmmed" thoughtfully into her collarbone. "Was this for me?" It wasn't a real question. She wanted the answer anyway.

"No," Yasha breathed.

Beau rewarded her with a slow drift of her hand down to the fine black hairs that glistened with need between Yasha's legs. She hadn't touched her clit yet and she didn't now, but her strokes all around were a promise as she said, "then don't tell me about me."

Yasha whined a little, and the sound felt like it pulled Beau in two with the way it ached for her. "I see…me," she managed. "I'm tied and f-forced to watch myself falling…falling apart without being able to stop you."

She could stop her, physically, they both knew it. Beau pressed a finger against her entrance and moved it slowly up and down, breathless at the way even just that soft touch seemed to pull a string in Yasha as her hips jerked just a little. "That's right," Beau said. "You wanted to give yourself to me tonight, and gods you're amazing." It wasn't like her to talk so much, to almost narrate the things that went on between them. But it felt right, like it was what Yasha needed, and that was good enough for Beau. She looked up so that their eyes met in the mirror. Yasha's face was flushed dark, and the _sight_ of her like this, tied open and approaching desperation for Beau's touch, all of her bared to Beau and to herself-

Something about meeting Beau's eyes made Yasha squirm and pull on the ropes with any kind of real intention for the first time as a whimper escaped her. Beau shushed her gently and resumed kissing down her shoulder to her breast. "I won't look," she promised. "Just watch yourself and keep watching."

Yasha's hips pushed her cunt down against Beau's hand to take in her one finger to the knuckle. Beau knew it couldn't feel like much at all, not when she was dripping like that, but Yasha gave the smallest high-pitched wail as she clenched around Beau. "I want to let you see," she gasped. "You -"

Beau leaned forward and cut her off gently with a kiss, sliding her finger in and out of Yasha's slick warmth with slow purpose. "It's not about me." She leaned her forehead against Yasha's, temporarily blocking her view of the mirror. "You need this, don't you?" Beau didn't start the sentence knowing how the rest of it would go, but she found that the words were there as Yasha reacted beautifully, pulling again on the ropes but in a way that suggested more control, like she was using them to brace. "You need to know you can break for me," Beau continued a little more strongly. "What's waiting on the other side of it."

"Yes." The word came out broken and choked, and Beau added a tentative finger and pressed back into her, watching her intently all the while for any sign that she should slow down again.

"You're doing so good," she said, curling her fingers just a little without increasing speed or thrust. Her fingers simply rocked in and out of her, leaving her clit untouched. "It's okay to let go. You can let me see when you're ready. Just watch." She pulled away from Yasha's face, rubbed her free hand along the muscle flexing along the inside of one powerful thigh as she flattened herself on the bed and dropped her nose to Yasha's curls.

Gods, this was heavenly. She wouldn't change a thing about the way she and Yasha usually did this, but she'd never had the chance to just sit right here with Yasha and take in the smell of her wet heat, to bury her nose gently in it and look up to see her stomach muscles flexing and her mouth fall open as little gasps and pants tumbled from her lips. Her eyes stayed resolutely on the mirror, and gods it was so much to be allowed to do this for her. Beau darted her tongue out and licked a slow and light stripe through Yasha's folds and over her clit for the first time, and Yasha writhed above her, hips coming off the bed.

It seemed right to Beau, that this woman she'd seen wield a greatsword like a toothpick and who took hits with hardly a shrug should have such a sensitive bud here at her center. There was a kind of balance to it, and Beau's movements were infinitely gentle and slow as she massaged it with her tongue. Her mouth was watering, mingling freely with the taste of Yasha, the salt tang of her want as her thighs began to tremble around Beau.

She stayed calm and slow, keeping to the most basic of patterns and letting Yasha gather herself as her orgasm built. She didn't want to ruin it now, here at the end, and send Yasha too hard over the edge. She'd been trusted to bring Yasha to this place, and she wasn't dropping the ball now.

When Yasha came, it was with a quiet kind of shudder that rolled over her whole body and might have gone unnoticed if not for the unnatural stillness and cessation of her moans and gasps - or the way Beau could feel her walls clenching on her fingers. She held them still on instinct and only barely adjusted anything with her tongue lest she overstimulate Yasha on the comedown, and when it was over she took just as much care withdrawing her fingers, dropping a kiss to the inside of that great muscled thigh when it jumped anyway in response.

She looked up to find Yasha staring down at her, eyes blazing with lust and shiny just a little with tears. Beau allowed herself just a few seconds of indulgent teasing as she sucked her fingers clean while Yasha watched, transfixed, and then she was moving carefully up her body to wrap her arms around Yasha's neck and ribs just to hold her while she panted against Beau's collarbone, making no effort to tug on her ropes.

"Okay?" she asked when Yasha's quiet not-quite-sobs had evened back out and she was loose in Beau's arms and under her body. Yasha nodded and made no attempt to move. Beau pulled back gently and searched her face, the hand on her neck coming around the cup her jaw. "You sure?"

Yasha smiled a cracked thing against Beau's thumb. "I think I needed that, and you were there to help me," she said. "That's all I was looking for."

Beau watched her with concern for a long moment, unsure how much of that was a way to dance around saying "no" and how much of it was that Yasha herself was uncertain of the answer. "Is this about the fight earlier?"

Yasha huffed a kind of laugh and shook her head, chest still heaving slightly. "Not about it, no. It just kind of…" her eyes met Beau's uncertainly. "I realized I had been holding back a little, but not because of you. I know I'm safe with you. I just…"

"Needed to prove it to yourself?" Beau asked quietly.

Yasha nodded and took a deep and shuddering inhale. "I was right, and I knew I was right before I asked." Her laugh was a little warmer this time, still shaky but relaxed. "I had no idea how right I was. I love you, Beau. You know that, right?"

Beau was stunned, but she'd had enough practice keeping her immediate reactions from giving her away that she managed to avoid risking Yasha taking her the wrong way. "O-of course," she stammered.

Smooth.

"I love you too," she said in a rush, just barely keeping it from coming out as one word. "We just - words -?"

Yasha had just enough room to lean forward and kiss Beau, still smiling. "They're cheap," she said. "I know. But you still deserve to hear them, especially after…" she swallowed. "It was always true before, but I needed to tell you."

Beau nodded, the numb sensation of shock washing away to leave something clean and bright in its wake as she leaned in this time until Yasha's back touched the headboard again and kissed her. Words were just words, but the power it took to say them, to trust Beau with them - that was the furthest thing from cheap, and Beau's heart felt weighted with it.

No, not weighted. Anchored. Tethered.

Part of her wanted to say it again, more emphatically this time, but she knew somehow that it would land flat. For her, for now, it was best to just keep showing. She leaned back and looked up at the mirror again, unafraid to intrude on Yasha now and unsurprised when she lifted her gaze to meet her there a moment later.

"You didn't even take your clothes off." There was a kind of wonder in Yasha's voice.

Beau laughed unexpectedly. "Did you only just notice?"

Yasha smiled. "I had other things on my mind." She watched herself give an experimental tug on the ropes, glanced back at Beau. "Caleb said everything repairs itself between visits, yeah?"

Beau's eyes widened. "Um." Thank the gods she had tied Yasha to the headboard itself and not to the posts of the bed - the ones that held up the mirror.

Yasha wrapped her fingers on the ropes behind her hands and gave a sharp tug. All of the muscles in her shoulders and arms flexed, and with a brisk snapping sound, both of the decorative flourishes of the headboard popped off and landed somewhere on the carpet. Yasha brought her arms around Beau's back and smiled in a self satisfied way as she got to work unraveling the rope. "Do you want me to take care of you now?"

Beau's heart was somewhere in her throat. "I was actually fine?" she squeaked. Which was true, technically. "Until you did that. Now I kind of just want you to fuck me, capital F."

She let Yasha pull her closer and fall to the side so that Beau was half under her now, looking up and just able to see Yasha's broad back in the mirror. As she watched, Yasha's muscles flexed and her giant white wings unfolded, suffusing the room with a kind of warm glow that made Beau feel like she was somehow seeing white and yellow and all of the colors from rainbows that maybe didn't even exist at the same time. "Maybe later," Yasha mused as she shifted her weight onto one arm so that the other hand could slip under Beau's waistband. It almost wasn't enough to tear Beau's attention away - almost. "You've got me feeling a little, ah…sappy, now I think," Yasha continued. "Fair's fair."

Beau gulped, the coals of the fire she'd been keeping low in her focus stirring brighter suddenly as she thought back over the last 90 minutes and tried to picture it happening to her at the hands of a literal angel. "Yeah okay," she rasped. "Fair's fair."

**Author's Note:**

> What if I told you the fic was supposed to end with Yasha picking herself up after the fight and going to find Beau.


End file.
